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Personal Narrative Essay: The Cause Of The Mishap

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“Billy, we must be able to walk in here! You’ve got to watch where you are laying those tracks!” Mom was exasperated with my electric train obsession. The black plastic tracks crisscrossed the entire living room and dining room floor in such a way that I had developed a hopscotch pattern of ambulating to my room. I had created hills out of piles of old phone books and shoe boxes and rivers with my large collection of blue t-shirts. The tracks wound their way around the homemade terrain; grey clouds of engineered smoke rose from the chimney of the locomotive. The train cars click-clacked at a steady rate around the long and winding track until they hit a bump where the track was not connected properly. I would race to the site of the accident and hurry to determine the cause of the mishap. The more time I spent with the trains, the fewer the number of collisions occurred. The train set has become a prized possession that links me to the close relationship I had with my grandfather. On the eve of my seventh birthday, my grandfather, affectionately known as “Paw-Paw,” …show more content…

I potentially had ruined his beloved train set! He patted me on the shoulder and consoled, “It’s only a minor malfunction. We can fix this if we work together!” Paw-Paw rushed to the closet and returned with a box labeled “Lionel Train Maintenance Kit” which contained several small bottles and some tools. He instructed me on the proper methods to clean the tracks and to lubricate the gears so that the train would be back to normal operation. He explained how dust and grime (including crumbs) can negatively affect the train’s function. I promised him, “I will never eat pretzels while I’m playing with train set again. I will make certain that I properly maintain the train set from now

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